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Salesforce has announced Financial Services Cloud for Retail Banking, an application intended to help banks stay competitive by providing customers with intelligent experiences.
The new application is targeted at equipping banking staff at all levels with enhanced visibility of their customers, allow for processes to be made more efficient, while also opening the potential for providing customers with added support.
This new application is being provided to banks at a crucial time, as PSD2 is arriving at the beginning of 2018. The PSD2 directive is set to make almost unparalleled changes to the industry, as banks will no longer be able to hold dominant control over customer data.
With this data made available, third-parties will be poised to use their agility to provide cutting edge banking experiences to the customers of the established banks.
Rohit Mahna, SVP and GM of Financial Services, Salesforce, said: “Banks are no longer just competing against one another. They’re being compared to any company providing a convenient user experience that builds loyalty… With Financial Services Cloud for Retail Banking, Salesforce is making it possible for customers to love their banks again.”
Pressure is expected to mount on banks to take on applications such as the one released by Salesforce, so as to prevent themselves simply becoming a commodity. PSD2 is playing a major role in this movement.
Rohit Mahna, SVP and GM of Financial Services, Salesforce, told CBR: “PSD2 is only accelerating this, PSD2 is saying ‘listen banks’, you have to start making information on your customers accessible to others, and it is creating a standardisation across Europe. Those are the undertones that are going to drive this movement, this movement from product to customer experiences, and in our case we can then help banks unlock the power that they can bring to the customer experience.”
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HSBC recently announced the development of an open banking platform, embracing the structural changes to banking, and preparing to go with the flow rather than stay tethered to traditional processes.
Rebecca Wettemann, VP, research, Nucleus Research, said: “Nucleus has found that industry accelerators like Financial Services Cloud for Retail Banking accelerate time to value by reducing initial consulting costs by 40-60 percent, while also reducing ongoing administrative burdens… This enables Salesforce financial services customers to focus on innovations that matter and connections with customers.”